Smoke rose from the center of the Great Kiva at Chetro Ketl. The air was spicy- sweet with the smell of the burning pinyon pine. Bird-foot could hear the burbling voices of the men already seated inside.

“They have not yet begun to sing,” He thought.

An indigo night sky still clung to the west of the ochre pueblo buildings clustered in the canyon. A white wafer moon seemed to rest upon the western wall. The turquoise morning sky was streaked with gold and orange clouds above the plum-purple mesa to the east. A coyote silhouette barked and yodeled.

The summer solstice sun was about to rise. When its first rays formed a bright sepia rectangle on the dark west wall inside the kiva, illuminating the Kachina-priest, the men would start to sing “The Song of Ancestors.”

“I must hurry,” Bird-foot thought, trying to quicken his limping pace, hobbled by the deformed left foot that was his namesake. It scribbled short sentences in the cinnamon dirt as he hurried.

“I cannot be late. Father will not make a place for me. He will look away when I enter. I hope the others will not laugh at me again,” Bird-foot thought.

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